Tag: Blu-ray

Little disappointed to find my Xbox One S excluded from the top Ultra HD Blu-ray picks due to it’s gameyness and Netflix HDR performance (does anyone sell a 4K TV without Netflix built in?). So feel free to completely disregard Chris’s picks :). After researching every currently available 4K Blu-ray player, and spending more than 20 hours testing the features […]

Streaming is winning the format war, but that doesn’t mean that Blu-ray is down-and-out. In fact, there’s a [last gasp] effort to update the format to support 4K (UHD) and HDR – with Tech Rader making a case for why it’s important. I get their arguments, as they are essentially the same as the apology for 1080p Blu-ray (looks better, […]

If you like movies, quality matters. The more “real” the audio and video, the more immersive and enjoyable the experience. That’s why we like big, high resolution TVs and multi-channel audio. No doubt OTT streaming services have gotten better, much better, over the last couple years. But how well do they stack up against physical media? It’s been over two […]

Having picked up a Sony Playstation 4 recently, I was a bit disappointed to find that while it wouldn’t play 3D Blu-ray (something the PS3 could do). Sony fixed that issue, along with adding some enhancements to general disc playback. I had a chance to check it out briefly (updated and threw in The Lego Movie while heating up lunch) […]

Last year CyberLink added the option to subscribe to PowerDVD alongside their cloud service, and that continues to be available this year with PowerDVD 14. The $44.99 per year (or $14.99 per quarter) alongside the standard purchase options of Ultra ($99.95), Pro ($79.95) and Standard ($49.95). If you opt for the subscription or Ultra 10GB of CyberLink Cloud storage is […]

As much as I like the sound of 4K OTT, it just doesn’t seem realistic in any reasonable time frame. So I was thrilled to see a report on HDTVtest that SINGULUS appears to have outed the devices required to manufacture 100GB Blu-ray discs. Hopefully they are correct and it’s exactly what we need to get 4K movies out sooner […]

A quicky for you all. 8hrs left on Best Buy’s Harry Potter 8 Film collection for $44.99 (66.49 @ Amazon). At $5.60/movie, that makes it a no-brainer price-point for me. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Misc/Deal-of-the-Day/pcmcat248000050016.c?id=pcmcat248000050016&ref=167&loc=02

Every time a new release of HTPC Blu-ray software comes out I am amused by the standalone v. HTPC discussions that crop up here and at AVS Forum. While there is validity on both sides of the argument, there is one point that doesn’t get much mention, which makes the PC side a clear winner for me – SlySoft’s AnyDVD […]

When we were at CES, CyberLink was showing a beta version of PowerDVD 12. There were some advancements in the product versus its predecessor, PowerDVD 11 – most notably automatic refresh rate switching, but the best part was that they gave me a copy to bring back and test on a variety of systems to provide a preview of what […]

VLC is a popular media player among HTPC enthusiasts due, in no large part, to its support for a wide range of file formats. Many folks were attracted to VLC early on because it was one of the first open source media players to support encrypted DVD playback. Recent updates to VLC and a VideoLAN Organization project called libaacs have […]